Helix is a family of software products that facilitates the rapid development, deployment and management of applications for individuals and groups of users across both local and wide area networks.

Our core product is called Helix RADE (Rapid Application Development Environment). It is a powerful, visual tool for programming relational databases and generating applications that use those databases.

Helix was created in 1983, and was one of the original core group of 30 products designed to help launch the Macintosh computing platform.

During the next quarter century, primarily by word of mouth, Helix became the tool of choice for developers working in more than 400 different industry segments, and was used by every level of user from hobbyist to professional to create a vast array of applications that continue to serve those individuals and industries today.

Beginning in 2002, the Helix product line has undergone a very difficult transition from its Classic Macintosh underpinnings to work on the macOS platform.

This has been a grass-roots, user-financed effort. The work reached an important milestore with the release of Helix RADE 6.2 on June 10, 2013, and continues on.

Helix RADE

Helix RADE (Rapid Application Development Environment) features an intuitive graphical interface for speed and ease of use.

Helix RADE is one tool that does the critical work usually done by several separate tools. With Helix RADE, one can design and implement an application from start to finish, creating any necessary database components, building the user interface, and putting it to work in various network configurations. Years of field experience have proven beyond any conceivable doubt that given the same set of specifications, the work can be done better and faster, and therefore less expensively, in Helix than with any other tool or combination of tools. The resulting applications are fast, powerful, and flexible.

Comprised of Helix Server and Helix Client, these products allow any Helix Collection that is set up to operate in User Mode to run on a variety of network configurations.

Designed for workgroups from 2 to 200, the Client/Server model guarantees that every user has simultaneous access to the data, unlike file sharing, where each user must wait for the others to finish their work before even being able to see the data, no less edit it. Even so, Helix Server features built-in record locking, making sure two users can not edit the same record at the same time.

Helix Server is licensed according to the number of Clients that will be accessing the collection at any given time. The Client application can be distributed without restriction, allowing access from any machine with internet access.

Dedicated server hardware is not required, but it is recommended for optimal performance or for workgroups of 4 or more.

The Helix Designer’s Toolkit is a suite of tools for commercial products developed in Helix. It includes limited-distribution rights for Helix Engine, product discounts, and extended technical support. Contact our sales or support departments for further information.

Apart from developers of commercial programs, Helix users with multiple single-user applications can use the Helix Engine as an economic alternative to having multiple Helix RADE licenses.

Helix Collection Maintenance

Each of the Helix products described above includes a maintenance program called Helix Utility, which is designed to assure the structural and data integrity of the applications you build with Helix RADE.

Helix Utility is used to check applications for "data damage." Applications that can be created with Helix involve more active disk I/O (input/output) than most other types of applications. Sometimes, these applications can become damaged in a way that results in data (indexes, records, etc.) corruption. Helix Utility repairs most of the data problems a Helix user is likely to encounter.

For users of Helix 6.0 & 6.1 on Macs running macOS 10.4–10.6, Helix Maintenance Manager fully automates the backup and maintenance of Helix collections. (An Intel-native update that works with Helix 6.2 is planned, but not yet announced.)

HMM lets you create ‘Maintenance Plans’ for your collections, each having its own schedule and process. An activity log tells you when your tests were run, what was found, what actions were taken, and whether or not the result was successful.